Chapter Twenty-Six

Benjamin

“Hey, man, I’m driving with Gin.”

Damn.

I thwack my head on the doorframe as I stand and turn to face Marcel. “You’ve driven with Gin the last three times. Besides, I can’t ride with Mom.”

“You bloody well can!” He crosses his arms as though making a barricade against any sense I might talk into him.

“No, Marcel, I can’t!” Farther down the field, Gin and Emma wind through the parked cars and trucks, obviously headed this way. I lean in close to keep the girls from overhearing. “Mom thinks Emma’s going to trick me into taking on the curse, and I got mad and left.”

Marcel’s face drops like I’ve taken all his Christmas presents and thrown them in a fire. “Shit, man, I had no idea. Sure. Of course you should ride with us.”

I punch Marcel in the shoulder. “Thanks, man.”

Gin laughs at something Emma says, the happy, boisterous noise temporarily covering the sounds of the other carnies shouting orders and directions. A small smile cracks Marcel’s face, and if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say I’m wearing a matching one.

…

Marcel, Emma, and I watch the slow, steady crawl across Texas from the windows of the Gran Torino. At the last minute, Whiskey begged Gin to ride in the family’s SUV, because Whiskey was trying to convince their parents to let her keep a cat in the trailer and she thought Gin could help her case. I have a feeling that conversation will not go the way Whiskey thinks it will.

An axle on the truck that carries Lars’s Ferris wheel breaks in two and the alternator gives out on Mom’s truck. Those kinds of things, we have come to expect over the last few days. But not what happens to the Gran Torino.

We’re flying down the highway after a stop for gas when something heavy thumps from underneath the hood of the car. Marcel and I look at each other. I’m willing to write it off as a rock or clump of dirt that must have been kicked up from the road. Marcel and Emma continue to play some sort of game they’ve made up involving movie quotes, and I grip onto the wheel a little bit tighter, more mindful of the road in front of me.

Fifteen miles fly beneath the tires before the dial marking the car’s heat begins to rapidly crawl upward.

“Shit.” I steer toward the shoulder. We’d been pulling up the rear of the long line of trucks and trailers and cars, and not a one of them has noticed our trouble. As the caravan speeds down the highway, I throw a nervous glance to Emma sitting next to me in the passenger seat. I know what happens once the curse victim gets too far from the heart of the carnival, and I can’t bear to see that happen to her. But Marcel and I have managed to fix a hundred minor problems with this car before, so I push the horrible thought aside as we get out to see what’s wrong.

Steam billows from under the open hood. After a minute of poking around, I find the problem. The fan belt has snapped cleanly in two. As Marcel hangs over the side of the car, checking the coolant levels, I hold the belt up and peer at it from over my glasses.

This was not a natural break. Someone cut this. I run some mental calculations and figure that without the belt running the alternator and with the radio and air-conditioning on and draining the battery, then, yeah, we probably would have made it just this far before the car gave out.

Receipts for car parts and fast food spill out of the glove compartment as I rummage through for the pre-paid cell phone we keep for emergencies like this. I press my thumb to the power button, but it won’t turn on. I try again. Again. Shit. I fling the cheap plastic thing onto the side of the road. No one knows we broke down, and—more importantly—no one is going to stop.

“What the actual hell!” Marcel says.

“Marcel,” I say.

“It wasn’t a great phone, I’ll admit, but—”

“Marcel!” I say quietly. “We’ve got a bigger problem at the moment.” His eyes grow wider and wider as I explain what will happen to Emma if she’s separated from the carnival for too long.

“How long have we got?” He’s frowning, and I can tell he’s already compiling a list of what we’ll need—a new belt, a battery because ours is now dead and there seem to be no passersby on this desolate stretch of road, some coolant—and just how far away from one we might be. Before I can answer him, Emma steps out of the car and into the blazing Texas sunshine.

“What’s going on, guys?” Her fingers grip at the edge of the door, and the rubber seal squeaks in protest.

“Hurry,” I say to Marcel. I don’t say please, but then, I’m sure he knows. Our next stop is a little town called Bryan, and Marcel jogs down the tree-lined highway in that direction.

Fear has already bloomed in Emma’s eyes. “What’s wrong with the car?”

I still have the broken belt clenched tight in my fist, and I hold it out to her. “Someone sabotaged the car.”

She nods, most likely going over the list of potential perpetrators, just like I am. I had told her about the Morettis and the beating they gave me, hoping to get me to leave. Even now, I can see them laughing it up in their trailer as they think of us stranded, grease still caked in the creases of their fingers. But that is a problem for later.

The carnival caravan has long disappeared over the horizon, and Marcel’s sky-blue T-shirt is a smudge bobbing along the side of the road. How long has Emma been separated from the carnival? Ten minutes? Twenty? And how long will it take for the effects of the curse to sink into her bones, to paralyze and trap her within her own body?

“I don’t get how one little piece of rubber can keep the whole car running,” Emma says.

“Well.” I bring the two ends of the belt together, making them whole again. “There’s more than one piece of machinery affected. This one belt—”

I hold the belt up to show Emma, but something doesn’t seem right. Just as I’m about to ask her if she’s okay, she screams in pain. The noise is primal and raw, and it startles all the birds from their nearby roosts. It’s as though an electric shock jolts through Emma’s entire body, arms snapping to her sides, knees locking straight. She tilts to the side, unable to balance. I dart forward to catch her and she collides into my chest with a thud, all dead weight and rock-hard limbs.

“Ben! Benjamin, I can’t move my arms! I can’t—” Another scream tears from her throat and I wish I knew what to do. I brace my legs and hold her tight, determined to keep her from falling. And then, just as suddenly, she goes rigid.

I put one arm under her knees and my other behind her back and scoop her up. I run for the tree line a few feet away from the road, where I can lay her down in the shade. The grass is cool but prickly beneath my arms as I help her lie down, and a constant stream of chatter spills out of her.

“I thought I had more time, and it hurts, bastard didn’t say it would hurt so much, and don’t leave, Ben, please, please don’t leave me.”

Again, she screams. Her spine goes taut, like a thread about to snap. And all I can do is kneel in the grass beside her and watch. I didn’t keep count of how long the last spasm held her paralyzed, but this one seems longer. When she finally goes slack once again, I barely manage to count to thirty before another seizure runs through her.

I breathe, telling myself that on the next exhale, she’ll stop hurting.

On the next one.

On the next.

She never does. There’s no sound but the dry chatter of the late-season cicadas and blood rushing in my ears. A few cars slow when they see the Gran Torino with its hood up, but with no stranded driver standing by its side, they pass on quickly. I’m glad they don’t stop to help. How the hell would I explain Emma? How would I tell some Good Samaritan that no, I don’t want to take the paralyzed and seemingly comatose girl on the ground to the hospital and I swear I wasn’t the one to do this to her?

The sun has slipped closer to the earth and my legs are cramped from crouching by Emma’s side by the time I hear Marcel yell, “Oi!”

I grip Emma’s hand even as I turn in the direction I’d last seen my friend in. His shirt is drenched in sweat and he holds two straining plastic bags in his hands, but he’s back, and we’re going to fix this.

He jogs over, muttering a litany of “Shit! Shit! Shit!” when he sees Emma frozen on the ground.

“Can you handle it all yourself?” I ask. “It might go faster if I help, but I can’t leave Emma. Not when she asked me to stay.”

Marcel’s gaze darts down to where I’ve awkwardly twisted my hand to fit into Emma’s frozen fingers and says, “Yeah, no worries.”

In the back of my head, I register the sounds of Marcel working—metal plinking on the concrete as he trades out one tool for another, the occasional curse, the rustle of plastic as he pulls the new parts from their bags—but I tune it out and focus on Emma. “It’s going to be okay, Em. Marcel will have the car running in just a couple of minutes, okay?” Both of these things could be lies, but I say them anyway. “I’m here, okay?” It’s the only thing I know for a fact.

Finally Marcel runs toward us. “We’re good. Let’s go.”

We carry Emma to the car and lay her down in the backseat as carefully as possible. The seat belts are useless, just one more thing to fix that we hadn’t gotten to yet. So I cram myself into the footwell, ready to keep her steady the whole ride to the next site.

Marcel tears down the highway, but we’re quickly ensnarled in afternoon traffic when we enter the town. He speeds through every yellow light and swears loudly at every red. Rocks and clods of dirt ping against the floor of the car and I know we’re on the track leading to the carnival grounds. Marcel taps out a staccato rhythm on the horn, yelling for people to get out of the way.

When he throws the car into park, Emma rocks forward, but I catch her. “We’re here,” I say, more for my benefit than hers. How long will it take for her to come back to us? Where’s the heart of the carnival if the carnival hasn’t even been set up yet?

Marcel and I lift her dead weight out of the car and lay her down on the trampled grass. I twist one of her hands in my own and place my other on her cheek. I just want to see her move. To blink. Something. The murmurs of the gathering crowd draw closer, but my gaze never leaves Emma. I hear a litany of, “Please, please, please,” and it takes a moment to realize that desperate prayer is coming from me.

My heart hammers out a panicked beat against my chest. Then her body gives a shake and a shudder, and she lets out a trembling cry. Marcel and I help her to sit on the ground beside the car, and I kneel next to her, unwilling and unable to let her out of my reach. Her hands twist into the fabric of my shirt, tugging me close, and I wind my arms around her. Neither of us can hold the other tight enough to feel safe.

Performers and roustabouts alike gather around us to see what all the commotion is. A few people—Mrs. Potter, Gin and Whiskey and their parents—seem genuinely worried, panic etched into their brows and frowns pulling down at the corners of their mouths. Others have on the wide eyes and dropped jaws of the shocked. Far too many of them wear the stone masks of the apathetic. The Morettis are nowhere to be seen, and their absence only solidifies their guilt. As these people look down at us, all I can wonder is: what will the Morettis do next?